Friday, April 18, 2014

Reviewing Patch 2.46 Part 1

Hey guys, since some days have passed after the installation of patch 2.46 part 1 I wanted to post a review on it and give pointers on the various aspects, so here we go:

Level 80 dungeon was added – Nirvana.
The dungeon is nice and I find it more pleasant than Lych NM of which we were sooooo very tired. The new and interesting thing about this dungeon is that there are no crystaloids as in all other dungeons and you find legendary stones even in the Normal difficulty, but you get 3 from one mini-boss in the Normal versus 6 in the Nightmare version.

Most people should also be able to do the NM, but only the 2 mini-bosses and only those parties who have a tank with high HP and a good damage output can complete the NM. The final boss has an attack that hits for 100,000 damage irrelevant of anything, it is exactly and always 100,000, so you would need to have a minimum of 120,000 HP or better to be safe around 150,000 HP as a tank in the front to complete the NM version.

Level 80 Equipment (requires Level 80 Legendary Stones, Shards, and Level 70 Set).
So the 80 set is build upon the 70 set. This is an interesting concept because some people skipped from 50 to 70, so in the future people will not be able to skip from 60 to 80 as the game requires you to go through the collection of the 70 set.

Another twist is that the shards are not sold in the Arena Shop like all other sets, which means that the Insignia becomes useless for everyone who has a complete 70 set.

New quest concept: Lost Treasure.
Lost Treasure quests to make a party and go find a treasure is an interesting concept but is a major mess. The game is not designed to make it easy for people to find or make a party and this system completely bypasses the Hall of Heroes where people can make a room or join existing rooms. There are no rooms or anything facilitating the players making parties and, moreover, the actual finding of the treasure is nice with the map but having to fight useless long battles with those bosses has become already annoying very fast. So I think this should be a a solo quest with a more pleasant treasure finding experience. I say this also because we have so many things to do already in Wartune and this is an additional 15 minutes to 1 hour task depending on the party you have.

Battle Protection System
I feel we will still find out the true power of the Battle Protection system. I am still not sure if this is going to be a major issue or we will simply power play through it. I mean are we really going to think about each individual resistance or we are simply going to focus on making a super powerful sylph and just smash our way through things and I more think the latter. For example I have my 5 star blue Gaia on my Knight and I don't care at all about any Battle Protections I am still going to use her and will only switch to my Iris when healing is required.

Statues of the 3 Class Wars winners visible in the Cloud City.In short, very nice touch.

Amethyst Mine has been modified: 10 second protection period after battle for all.
This is good of course, but they still fail to see the failure of the Amethyst Mine. It is a no-fun zombie-like activity where most people just cart those 2 carts and done. Not because they enjoy it, but just to get those points and finish the task. Someone needs to re-think the Amethyst Mine concept into a more fun activity rather than what it is. Additionally the lag in Amethyst has increased vastly and this is again due to a poor design. A very easy fix to this, even if temporary could be to give us the eye button also in Amethyst to simply switch off all other players like in the Cloud City.

Ability to do Fishing and Jewel Hunt while Blitzing.
Very nice - should not have been blocked in the first place :)

Group Arena attempts have been decreased to 15 while rewards have been doubled.
Nice.

Card System has been streamlined.
I am always worried when people use words like "streamlined" for things like this :)
I personally didn't have a problem with the previous design, but perhaps they received tons of complaints. In any case the new design is nice as well, so thumbs up.

Now let's go into things they didn't mention at all:

World Boss FreezeA, sorry to say, but really criminal implementation of Archers' Deep Freeze to work on the World Boss as well as the Thunderer slow of Mages completely obliterating the already behind class of Knights. This resulted in up to triple more profits for archers versus knights with mages being in the middle. Whoever approved this change clearly does not understand the game mechanics and I hope that not only this will be fixed by either boosting knights or removing this implementation but that there will be a little bit of attention paid to equalizing the classes.

Sylph's AFK works & Tower of King Changes
Sylphs also activate in AFK mode, and use their delphic skills. Sylphs use the highest damaging skills when they have them, and use the lower skills when high damaging ones are on cooldown. IRIS also heals when your hp is around 20% in AFK mode.
A good fix indeed as there was no logic whatsoever why for example AFK mode was ignoring the delphic skills.
However, as another side effect of this the Sylphs also started activating in Plunders and Tower of Kings on the Enemy's side, which created a major issue, however the Holy Seal all of a sudden became allowed and strangely works with a 100% success rate no matter on the HS level.
All this seems totally out of control in the sense that it seems they messed around with the programming and ended up with things they did not even intend to have = poorly done job. But ultimately no major issue for us in these side effects and positives seems to balance with negatives.

So what do you think guys? Let everyone know your thoughts in the comments.